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The purpose is to show how actors' relative power or parity is dynamically instanced in discrete speech behaviors that are exchanged throughout everyday organizational interaction.

Politeness theory, rooted in the dramaturgical theories of Erving Goffman, details a set of linguistic indices used to show regard for others' face. This conceptual paper draws on politeness theory to model the unfolding of power relations within face-to-face verbal interchange in organizations. The paper presents a number of propositions suggesting how power differentials (or parity) are reflected in a set of common speech behaviors used to defray threats to face throughout organizational interaction.

This article extends and applies politeness theory to organizations by exploring specific motives and linguistic outcomes of high and low power actors, describing the behavioral egalitarianism associated with organic organizations, and suggesting how the demand characteristics of face-to-face interaction create oligarchic tendencies that militate against the success of workplace participation. Politeness' role in the social construction of power, and in distortive processes within hierarchical communication, is also discussed.

This paper enables researchers to understand the specific linguistic features associated with power-related roles, and it shows how the social distribution of certain speech behaviors is a function of power and dependency relations.

The findings provide managers a fine-grained understanding of how power affects speech, and an understanding of how such speech patterns may stymie attempts to stimulate organizational empowerment and employee voice.

Prior scholarship has neglected this most important topic.

Financial analysts' roles and incentives mean that they have conflicting identities to maintain towards investors and firm managers. The authors study how analysts adopt various politeness strategies in their questioning to establish socially desirable identities in the Q&A of publicly accessible earnings calls.

The study is based on a sample of US firms with extreme earnings changes. 46 transcripts of end-of-year earnings calls were investigated with the help of linguistic discourse analysis, drawing on frameworks of face and linguistic politeness. For each transcript, the authors identified the structure of the face-threatening acts (FTAs) that arise when analysts ask probing questions and ascertained what specific politeness strategies, if any, are used by analysts to mitigate those FTAs. The authors examine how analysts perform identities through politeness in language and compare analysts' politeness behaviour and identity construction in the increasing earnings sub-sample with the decreasing earnings sub-sample.

Analysts negotiate different identities according to specific social contexts, promoting their identity as (1) competent professionals when firms report problematic performance by asking questions in a confrontational manner with few politeness strategies and (2) dependents of the firm by asking questions in a more polite manner when firms experience satisfactory performance. Analysts aim to present a socially desirable face in Q&A to influence managers' and investors' perceptions.

The study raises awareness about linguistic politeness as a communication strategy in the Q&A in earnings calls. It thereby enables managers and analysts to use linguistic politeness consciously and strategically and to recognise such use by others.

This study complements existing literature on earnings conference calls as part of external corporate communications by focusing on analysts' use of language when interacting with manages. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to show that politeness underpins analysts' language use as a device for identity negotiations. This is important to understand because analysts' identities vis-a-vis managers and investors is closely related to the stability of the financial system.

Training programs designed to enhance managerial effectiveness at cross‐cultural communication tend to be directed at specific target cultures. This paper argues that an etic approach, one based on universal variables that occur in every culture and that vary across cultures, comprises an important alternative. This paper reviews anthropological/sociolinguistic research on one universal variable, “politeness.” Politeness, or linguistic indirection used to show social consideration, is a crucial element of interpersonal communication in all human cultures, yet it has received little mention in the literature. Implications of politeness for managerial cross‐cultural communication are explored. The implications of a universalistic approach to cross‐cultural communication training are discussed.

Aims to examine consumer politeness, an interaction style that may prevent a dissatisfied customer from complaining about a negative service encounter, and seeks to determine the relationship between politeness and the propensity to engage in various types of complaining behavior.

Two surveys served to develop and validate a scale for measuring politeness and tested the relationship between consumer politeness and complaining behavior. The specific items for the politeness scale were developed based on the distinction between negative and positive politeness as described by politeness theory.

The results suggest an inverse relationship between politeness and complaining behavior. The studies also find that polite and impolite consumers do not necessarily engage in the same types of complaining behavior.

In future studies, researchers may consider examining the conditions under which polite consumers do and do not voice complaints. Researchers may also consider investigating the possibility of a relationship between politeness and the opposite of complaining behavior, i.e. complimenting behavior.

Given that voice offers managers an opportunity to identify and then remedy problems, they should look for non‐threatening ways to encourage consumers to engage in this behavior. Managers may, for example, consider using positive politeness as a means for soliciting complaints.

This study introduces a sociolinguistic construct to help explain propensity to engage in complaining behavior. As such, it serves to identify and isolate one of the challenges managers face in addressing consumer complaints across a variety of service industries.

This study investigated the use of language impoliteness of primary school teachers in communicating with their students during the learning process.

The methodology of this study used a mixed-method approach by involving 100 primary school teachers in the fifth and sixth grades. The researcher used the language politeness/impoliteness scale developed by Mantasiah et al. (2019) to measure teachers' language impoliteness. This scale was developed based on Brown and Levinson's theory who divided politeness maxims into six consisting of tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim, appreciation maxim, agreement maxim and sympathy maxim. The levels of teachers' language impoliteness were divided into five categories (5 = always, 4 = often, 3 = sometimes, 2 = rarely, 1 = never).

The finding shows that 28% of teachers were in the sometimes category and 33% of teachers were in the rarely category. The results signify that some teachers tend to speak impolitely with the students during the learning process. They considered that it was acceptable as they did not know the negative effects caused by their impolite language. Moreover, teachers were more likely to violate sympathy, tact and agreement maxims than other maxims.

The finding of this study can be applied generally at all levels of education, ranging from primary education to higher education, as a base to develop a program to improve the soft skills of teachers especially the way teachers communicate with their students in the learning process. By understanding language politeness theory, the awareness of teachers in communicating in the learning process can be improved, which can affect positively to the quality of learning process.

Numerous studies conducted on communication skills of teachers focused on using communication sciences approach. This study tried to use another approach to portray the communication skills of teachers based on language politeness uttered using linguistics approach. Moreover, previous studies preferred to conduct language politeness and impoliteness of teachers in senior high schools and lecturers in university, and there is still lack of studies focusing on language politeness of primary school teachers.

The purpose of this study is to examine the use of formality indicators in chat reference interchanges within the context of politeness theory, with its corollaries of face‐threat and social relationship development.

This discourse analysis identifies the syntactic and content indicators and patterns of formality levels in a purposive sample of 402 chat transcripts (covering 6,572 minutes) from one academic year at a large, US, public university.

Syntactic formality markers include regular use of contractions, slang, sentence fragments, and non‐standard punctuation as well as limited use of acronyms and abbreviations with rare use of emoticons. Content‐based markers included apologies, self‐disclosure, and expressions of extreme need. Use patterns are related to the level of responsibility assumed by the librarian as well as the interview stages.

A limited data source and potential coder bias are the two limitations of this study. The research implications point to the need for chat reference librarians to assume greater control of formality nuances in order to encourage a more effective search for the user.

The fundamentals of politeness theory, particularly in terms of formality indicators, should be incorporated into staff training and behavioral standards for reference librarians. While future research is needed to determine the most effective means of employing this theoretical construct, this study implies that a self‐reflective, culturally sensitive use of the nuances of formality can enhance the user's experience.

This study is the first to systematically examine formality indicators in the context of politeness theory. The use of two coders, a full academic year's worth of data, and a substantial sample provide great depth.

For student reference supervisors and trainers, it is crucial to understand the characteristics of the millennial worker and how we can effectively train student reference employees in virtual reference. The purpose of this paper is to present best practices for training the millennial generation of reference workers on virtual reference.

This paper is a combination of a case study and theoretical approach including a literature review of “computer mediated communication” (CMC) theory as well as Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) best practices. This paper describes the creation of a training manual for the millennial student who works in reference and are the primary respondents to instant messaging.

This project describes why it is necessary to train millennial student reference employees differently than librarians or paraprofessionals when dealing with virtual reference.

This paper presents practical training techniques that are grounded in two major communication theories: politeness theory and CMC theory and applies these theories to the practical training of the millennial student.

The library atmosphere is a very social one with several different types of communication methods. Many academic libraries use student employees to staff some of the high traffic public service points. In order to better treat our patrons and maintain a professional atmosphere, it is critical that we train students to leave behind their student mentality when working and to become more professional. It is a question of re‐conditioning the student employee from their more comfortable social methods of communication to that of what patrons expect.

This paper presents the benefits of having a specific training approach when supervising the millennial student reference worker, particularly when it comes to training for instant messaging/chat reference services.

The purpose of this study is to explore linguistic stylometric patterns encompassing lexical, syntactic, structural, sentiment and politeness features that are found in librarians’ responses to user queries.

A total of 462 online texts/transcripts comprising answers of librarians to users’ questions drawn from the Internet Public Library were examined. A Principal Component Analysis, which is a data reduction technique, was conducted on the texts and transcripts. Data analysis illustrates the three principal components that predominantly occur in librarians’ answers: stylometric richness, stylometric brevity and interpersonal support.

The results of the study have important implications in digital information services because stylometric features such as lexical richness, structural clarity and interpersonal support may interplay with the degree of complexity of user queries, the (a)synchronous communication mode, application of information service guideline and manuals and overall characteristics and quality of a given digital information service. Such interplay may bring forth a direct impact on user perceptions and satisfaction regarding interaction with librarians and the information service received through the computer-mediated communication channel.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the stylometric features encompassing lexical, syntactic, structural, sentiment and politeness using Principal Component Analysis have not been explored in digital information/reference services. Thus, there is an emergent need to explore more fully how linguistic stylometric features interplay with the types of user queries, the asynchronous online communication mode, application of information service guidelines and the quality of a particular digital information service.

This study aims to investigate the main and interactive effects of three employee attributes, namely, employee friendliness, helpfulness and respectfulness, on customer satisfaction in Mainland China.

A 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design enabled an eight-scenario study depicting a service experience manipulated by employee friendliness (high/low), helpfulness (high/low) and respectfulness (high/low).

It is found that the effect of respectfulness has the strongest impact on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction generated by helpfulness is higher when respectfulness is high rather than low, while the interaction between helpfulness and friendliness is not found, even though helpfulness exerts a stronger effect than friendliness on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is also maximized when all three positive interpersonal attributes all jointly presented. Interestingly, the absence of respectfulness tends to trigger a negative effect, while the display of friendliness results in a positive effect.

Beyond the joint positive effects on service outcomes, different interaction patterns reveal that the display of friendliness is desirable and beneficial to enhance interpersonal outcome. However, the communication of respect is crucial, and, as such, managers and employees need to strive for a good balance on how to demonstrate these behaviours in critical moments such as service recovery. The findings from relative and interactive effects of three employee attributes are new in the literature and provide significant theoretical and managerial contributions for both researchers and managers.

This study takes the first step in decoding the cultural meaning of employee attributes through integrating Chinese traditional philosophy, Li (i.e. politeness), into a specific service setting by examining its comparative effects with other attributes.

The purpose of this study was to determine the relative impact of positive and negative face threats in conflict scenarios on the relational quality between disputants. This study also sought to determine whether the contextual variables of relational distance and power differential mediated this relationship as predicted by politeness theory.

To test the hypotheses, a 2 × 2 × 2 design was implemented manipulating the variables face (positive and negative), relational distance (business and personal) and power differential (high and low power differential). Participants read one of the eight scenarios, then responded to the dependent variables which focused on the impact of the face threats on relational quality between the participants. Subjects were recruited using the M-Turk, Amazon platform. Manipulation checks were carefully constructed to ensure subjects understood them.

The results of this study indicated that positive face threats have significantly more impact on relational quality between disputants than negative face threats. Moreover, context did not mediate these results. Neither relational distance nor power differential impacted the extent to which positive face threats compromised the relationship between the disputants.

This is the first study to explore the impact of face threats on relational outcomes in conflict. Prior studies focused only on the extent to which contextual variables would impact the choice of face threats that disputants might make in response to power and relational distance differences. This result suggests that face threats play a significant role in determining relational outcomes in conflict settings.

This study suggests that practitioners, such as mediators or group facilitators, should take steps to limit the kinds of positive face threats that disputants exchange during conflict. If positive face threats are allowed to escalate, then they can severely compromise the willingness of disputants to trust and continue to work toward an integrative solution.

Political divisions often appear to widen in the context of positive face threats as individuals seek to belittle the identities of their opponents. As these face threats escalate, they can result in polarizing language that disempowers these individuals from wanting to work together in a trusting relationship to accomplish important social goals.

This is the first study to explore the relative impact of positive and negative face threats on the relational quality of disputants in conflict. It is also the first to explore the extent to which context mediates the impact of face threats.